Homes Of The Billionaires

Once upon a time, the richest Americans all pretty much lived the same way. The men looked like the fellow from the Monopoly game and the women like Margaret Dumont from the old Marx Brothers films. Their houses were all pretty similar too: large, palatial, covered in marble and limestone, with vast rooms and stairways, and lots of butlers and maids running around.

Things have changed. While today's superrich still like to live in large houses, surrounded with the best that money can buy, they are much more individualistic. Their houses are more likely to reflect their own tastes and interests rather than adhering to a grand, though impersonal, style.

That is certainly the approach that
Oracle
Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Ellison takes; the ninth richest person in the U.S. could choose to live any way he likes--and he does. A devotee of Japanese martial arts, Ellison has constructed a Japanese-style imperial villa that includes 500 mature cherry, maple, ginkgo and other trees; it cost an estimated $100 million to build.

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One thing that has changed considerably since the early 20th century is that even Americans of more modest means now are apt to live in houses that dwarf those of their parents. A trip through the average suburb reveals street after street of medium-to-largish well-appointed homes complete with the latest modern conveniences. In a day when most Americans enjoy a standard of living unimaginable to their forebears--a standard that, thanks to technology, in many ways parallels or even surpasses the comforts that were once only the provenance of the very rich--it becomes harder for a billionaire's home to really stand out.

Take Michael Bloomberg, for example. The mayor of New York and founder of his eponymous financial news service is worth $4.85 billion. He lives in a townhouse on one of the best blocks on Manhattan's Upper East Side. What is more remarkable, however, is how many nonbillionaires live in homes that are just as nice. There are only 38 members of the Forbes 400 who reside in Manhattan and easily 100 times that number of townhouses.

Some billionaires don't even bother to flaunt their wealth. For instance,
Berkshire Hathaway
's
Warren Buffett--with a net worth of $36 billion--famously lives in the same home in Omaha, Nebr., that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. Although his home isn't shabby, the Happy Hollow neighborhood where he lives isn't even the ritziest in Omaha.

"You can probably find a fixer-upper in that neighborhood for about $175,000," says Christie Brandt, a real estate agent at DEEB Real Estate in Omaha. "It's a pricey area, but it's not the most expensive. Buffett's house is a lot like Warren--it's very conservative and it's impeccably maintained." (Buffett recently took a spot on our Best-Dressed Billionaires list.)

Of course, other billionaires are more conspicuous in their consumption. Tech billionaires Mark Cuban, worth $1.2 billion, and
Dell
's
Michael Dell, worth nearly $13 billion, live in homes that would intimidate Charles Foster Kane. Even more imposing is
Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates' Medina, Wash., home. The home of the world's richest man is, unsurprisingly, also one of the largest privately-owned single-family homes in the country, encompassing more than 66,000 square feet. The estate consumed 4.7 million gallons of water in 2000, according to The Seattle Times, and includes such lavish features as the latest technology, millions of dollars worth of art, and a 1,500-square-foot, 20-seat Art Deco theater.

Of course, one of the advantages of being superrich is that you can own more than one house. Some billionaires keep vacation homes that are larger and more expensive than the vast majority of Americans' primary homes (and are certainly more ostentatious than fellow billionaire Buffett's home). Oprah Winfrey, for instance, paid $50 million for a Montecito (Southern California) home that wasn't even for sale; and film director Steven Spielberg's summer home in the Hamptons is estimated to be worth $25 million.